Why we support Schwarzenegger

A few hours before Arnold Schwarzenegger announced hiscandidacy, the staff of the California Coastal Commission announcedthat desalination plants would be bad for our beaches. It wasanother example of the hostility to innovation that has brought ourstate to the mess it is in today. A once-mighty state of pioneersis governed by a corps of frightened, overprotective nannies.

So desalination may join the heap of other innovations drivenout of our state. But this is exactly the kind of new and daringthinking we need to save California. More than a new governor or anew budget, we need a new vision for California.

Reporters and opponents are gleefully exposing Schwarzenegger’slack of familiarity with the minutiae of government. But thechallenge goes beyond the workers compensation crisis, thebusinesses leaving California, the energy crisis, the housingcrisis and a dozen other crises. California is in crisis because welost our vision of what made this state great. Schwarzenegger canrestore that vision.

He came here with nothing and found everything. This is whatmade this the greatest state on earth.

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It wouldn’t make sense to put people in charge of solving aproblem if they created it. California is an alien place todaybecause of people like that. From the Legislature to the Capitol,they fill Sacramento with hostility to the very things that madethis state great.

They have created a world where desalination plants aredangerous, but the early release of 450 sex criminals is not; aplace where we used to fight for opportunities, but now fight forracial entitlements; a place where regulations can add $100,000 tothe price of a home and we wonder why new houses cost so much; aplace where state agents shut down housing projects one day thenattend seminars to figure out why there is not enough housing.

It’s a place where we hinder the development of energy plantsthen complain about high energy prices; a place where weover-regulate gasoline, then grumble the price is too high; a placewhere we value insects and bushes over people.

California attracts some of the brightest and most creativepeople in the world. But when their contributions come to thepublic sector, we treat them with suspicion and scorn.

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We raise taxes on the rich, then discover that the stateconsiders two-income, middle-class families to be rich. Wecriticize successful people, then mourn when they move their jobsto other states. We force contractors to pay inflated wages onpublic works projects, then wonder why government is spending morebut getting less. We take 20 years to plan a new road, then blameothers for traffic jams.

Confusion is killing our state. California has lost its way.Schwarzenegger can help us find it again.

Uvaldo Martinez of Encinitas is president of the CaliforniaHispanic Republican Assembly. Tracey Vackar is president of theMoreno Valley School Board. Sven Voss of San Diego is editor of theCalifornia Open Space Report.